We Are Both Mammals Read Online Free PDF Page A

point. If hooked up to machines you might have
survived, but you would simply have been comatose
forever.”
    She seemed to imply that I was much better
off with Toro-a-Ba keeping me alive.
    It did not feel that way to me.
    I supposed that, viewed from the surgeons’
perspectives, they felt that they had done the right thing. If
nothing else, even if I was not happy with their decision, they had
learned much. This had been an experiment worth making; and I was
simply the unvolunteer.
    “ In future, you’ll have to
take really good care of this guy,” one of the other human surgeons
told me lightly but seriously, referring to Toro-a-Ba. “He’s your
life-support system.”
     
    –––––––
     
    I had been given medication to prevent my vomiting,
since such upheaval would threaten my organs’ healing. I had not
eaten in weeks, being kept alive by intravenous liquids, so there
was nothing in my digestive system to evict; but that would not
stop my body attempting to vomit in reaction to the anaesthetic,
the drugs, and the shock it was experiencing. Everything
– painkillers, fluids, nutrients – was fed directly into
my bloodstream through drips, or into my organs via the hoses
embedded in my body. As the drugs were lessened, however, as my
body began to recover, the vomiting reflex set in. One day I took a
mouthful of water – the only thing I was taking orally – and
threw it straight back up again. It was agony. It felt as though my
stomach and intestines were being torn out of my belly. Having
vomited, I screamed in pain at the convulsion of my abdomen. A
human nurse hurried in and saw what had happened, and I was
immediately given more painkillers and sedated so that my body
could recover.
    It was explained to me, when I awoke later,
that this was a necessary stage in my recovery. The quantity and
intensity of the drugs I was taking must eventually be tapered off,
as if my body came to rely on the drugs it would become addicted to
them and would probably never fully heal itself. Stimulating my
body’s own healing powers was essential, and in order to do that
the drugs must gradually be eased away. Unfortunately, this
included allowing my body to react naturally to what it had
endured, and that meant vomiting, nausea, and pain.
    In all of this, Toro-a-Ba and I had barely
spoken to one another.
    I was intensely aware of his quiet presence,
more than arm’s reach to my right. I had scarcely any right to
live, now; every heartbeat of mine was his. My life was a
concession. It was not my own. Every minute I had now, was his.
    Occasionally he would try to speak to me,
asking me how I felt this day, but I could not bring myself to
reply. Eventually I was able to speak coherently with the nurses
and various specialists – human and thurga – who came to
examine me and the thurga, but I could scarcely bring myself to
look at the thurga, let alone speak to him. When I could look at
him, I would watch in macabre fascination as the specialists
examined him, and as the nurses changed or inspected his dressings
and hypodermic fittings, and often in these moments I would see him
glance toward me, as though seeking eye contact, but I could not
meet his gaze.
    I would hear him speaking, in Thurga-to or
in English, to the surgeons and nurses, many of whom he knew, of
course, from working with them here at the clinic; but I never
participated in these conversations and scarcely paid any attention
to them, even when they were relevant to me. I gathered, and
occasionally saw out of the corner of my eye, that the thurga read
books: he had a stand that seemed to be specially designed for the
purpose, with legs that stood on the mattress on either side of
him, and a slanted shelf upon which a book could rest, the pages
held open by two cords that hung from the top of the stand and
draped down over the pages of the book, weighted by heavy beads at
their ends. He would arrange a pillow or two behind his back